The Windows 7 group is for the discussion of technical issues that arise during the configuration and daily use of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, including system adoption challenges, system errors, and end-user issues.

Sharing on Windows 7

I used to do sharing of my childrens pc drives on my lan with xp and it was quite easy. I had a username and password on my their pcs, I shared their drives and then mapped a drive on my pc to their c drive on their pc using my useename and password on their pc.
When I try to do the same on Win7 I map my drive and it doesn't ask for a username and password it just says I dont have access.
I have tried using the homegroup system instead, both vers of Win7 are compatible. But it keeps saying I already have a homegroup, but I cant get to a page that shows a join option so I cannot joing the other pcs to the group. I really dont understand and troubleshooting normally takes you round in circles.
Does any body know of a user friendly tutorial on this that highlights any anomolies or issues there may be. The text in win7 seems to keep refering to a homegroup and the homegroup interchangeably. Perhaps I have two homegroups, since the password for the homegroup on each pc is different, but I'm not finding this feature very intuitive to be honset.
Help this Win7 newbiew plz!!!!

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HomeGroups are great but there are a few limitations that can get confusing. I would start here and pay particular attention to the HomeGroup Troubleshooter which is very good at solving problems in this area:

Suddenly the Join button appeared on one of the Pcs. I have no idea
how. Once I selected Join everything was ok.
However I am still unable to connect one pc to the c drive on the other pc.
I have shared that c drive and allowed permision to a user on that pc.
But when I try to map to that drive from the other pc it doesn't allow
me to enter the user name and password, it just says I have no permission.
Both Pcs are in the same work group. One has Home Premium and one has
Proffessional (Win7). I thought perhaps I could allow permision on the
c drive to the user on the first (connecting) pc since they are in the
same work group, but when I select for the c drive users for
permissions, it only allows me to select from the local pc as a
location, it does not show the workgroup and allow me to select the user
from the other pc. I thought this was kind of the point of having work
groups. Perhaps I have misunderstood, but if not then I am unclear what
advantage you get by having two machines in the same workgroup if you
can't allow access to users

However, you can create/use Homegroup for sharing in a non networked
environment.

To create a homegroup
1. Open HomeGroup by clicking the Start button, clicking Control
Panel, typing homegroup in the search box, and then clicking HomeGroup.
2. On the Share with other home computers running Windows 7 page,
click Create a homegroup, and then follow the instructions.
. If a homegroup already exists on your network, Windows will ask if
you would like to join it instead of creating a new one.
. If your computer belongs to a domain, you can join a homegroup but
you can't create one. You can access files and resources on other homegroup
computers, but you can't share your own files and resources with the
homegroup.

I've been watching this thread and unfortunately the advice below is
incorrect for the problem that started the thread. W7 Homegroups are much
more simpler than what was available with XP and significantly simpler that
with Vista. To create a homogeneous network with a combination of XP and 7
the trick lies in the Advanced Sharing tabs of the folder properties. You
must pay special attention to nested folders because sub-folders do not
always inherit the rights of the parent root sub-folder. For best results
with the W7 machines, set the access rights to each and every folder in a
hierarchy to achieve best results. Obviously, XP machines can not join a
Workgroup, but sharing is possible both ways. On the W7 machines you must
remove the Password Access Required general setting.

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Good points by Lee and, just a minor correction to Zenner's comments, Win 7 Professional IS sold in the retail outlets as well. Places like Best Buy, etc... have them. :) However, you don't need Win 7 Pro to solve this particular issue.

I think the real issues is that with Windows Vista and Windows 7 you will need to make sure you are using a user that is on the target machine you can do that when you specify that you want to logIn on that specific machine.

Your PC is W7 and the target PC is XP both have your user and they have the same password for your user.
So USER1 (you) on your PC named W7 try to access a share on the target PC nemed XP.
When proped a username and password you are probably introducing the correct username and password but you are not using a XP user, you are using you local W7 user.

The way to correct that is to use this format when prompted for the username

I still find it ludicrous one has to jump through so many hoops in Windows to make a network and allow other to share a folder or two; even when using windows 7 variants on each PC. We send people into space, we can build machines so small you can't see them, we can repair people but we struggle to share a file between the same OS... fascinating!

I think the point is to buy as much OS as you need and no more than you
need. There is lot information out there which lets you know, before you
buy, which version lets you perform certain actions. It's going to be
interesting when Mom 'n Pop buy Jr. the "loss leader" version of a
tablet/laptop and send him off to school, college or university. Where he
finds out that the version he has would do what the school wants . and the
hardware of the Tablet is not powerful enough to run the better version, at
best performance levels. "Should 'a had a V-8"

I'm of the opinion that giving people a choice is a good thing. Plus, if
they make a mistake - the good thing about Win7 is you just need to purchase
an upgrade pack and unlock the version you want, needed. It's not like you
have to format, reload and rebuild.as they did in previous versions.

Hi
I am the user originating this thread.
Thank you all of you so much for your input. I think I shall upgrade
the win7 home premium to Win7 Prof and try again after that.
Also I have general software and computing knowledge, but little windows
knowledge. Where every one is saying "network" and "a network" I asume
(without being too pedantic) that people are talking about a "Windows
Network" or maybe even a "Windows Workgroup/Network".
ALSO: I think what is really anoying is that on the Pc with Win7
Premium I read the help provided with that install all about Workgroups
and I "create" and "join" a Workgroup, but the O/S I/F or Help never
guides me any where alomng the way that I do not have the full hit and
never reasures me that I have done everything right, but that I should
not expect to see certain things.
There are many other O/S differences where you are lead along a path
(cos the path or help is taylored for all) then dropped at the end.
Just my moan, though I'm sure a good 50% of it is probably my inexperience.
Thank you again. I really appreciate it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm impressed with win7's homegroup thang, but networking should be a standard feature. That fact one has to upgrade to get it seems daft, you may as well buy network magic its a cheaper option and it works.
Giving people a choice is nice but only if they understand the choices given, I don't mean to say people are thick, but that they don't necessarily want to understand, they just want it to work; bit like a car, put the key in and away they go, but with Windows they are saying you can buy the car but if you want it to move you have to buy the pro or ultimate, that has the engine bit, I don't think that a fair deal, I mean who' doesn't want to have a network nowadays and who would just like to be able to plug a PC into a network and bam everyone can see you, if you don't want to be seen make the PC invisible just like in MSn Messenger, don't do it backwards on, make it so all PC are visible first, instead of trying to make them visible, when they are all invisible first.
Windows 7 was my idea lol! do they have offices in Hawaii because I'd like to go and test my new 'Visible/Invisible Network' or VIN for short there please, Cheers Bill! lol!

My initial reaction on reading this thread is that MS is migrating it's OS peer-to-peer technology towards it's with a simplified UI and more similarities to the distributed sharing features of say MSN.

This also hints at MS adding additional "sand boxing" on the network side if they have now split of file sharing from internal networking to some degree? Any comments?

My comments are partly in context to MS's migrating it's Office technology towards web formats and XML during the 00's.

This also involved new and low tech user interface changes. Although I don't use the '07 clunky tool bars because of display space, those darn MS guys stole my idea for what keyboard shortcut help when you press the ALT key.

Mice are anoying and hard to controls pests that are best avoided by serious high volume UI users but nobody I know remembers 1000 keyboard shortcuts. If MS won't put a BHO into IE8 to do this perhaps someone from the group would give me an hand although I would prefer MS did it by next month. Ditto Firefox.

To return to topic, if MS makes the mistake of limiting rather than opening their networking functionality at the low end they could be headed for trouble after the VISTA popularity issues.

(please don't scoff) I am a VISTA fan and hoping WIN7 (maybe SP2) will be what XP (SP2) was to Windows 95, 95 1/2, 95 3/4, 98, 2000. The debugged and optimized version that susequently gets the odd security, module or new feature (ie Silverlight) update.

I like the metaphor that Vista (going back to NT) sand-boxed the application memory process space so that when their (and typically all us developers) prematurely released software screws up. .Net in turn further sand-boxed the web applications functionality space for security as well as other reasons.

Shared folders and their web equivalents are a good additional abstraction that can deal with both security and ease of use issues. In my mind they compliement web and all distributed computing as ActiveX compliments DCOM or web document markup (XHTML, XML, SGML) complement Microsoft Office. In this case maybe something between your Tweeter's widgets and your network.

If they work...

I would welcome the group's addition comments on WIN7 and comment or dissenting views on the above.

Good luck and good additional comments. This being site we should discuss that for someone less technical than yourself maybe.

I would say at it's simplest level, a "Windows Workgroup/Network" peer-to-peer( computer to computer) that might not have a network server. Your workgroup is the group of computers that share their folders and drives on the larger network.

As users we are familar with and see Windows as clicking a document (program opens) or opening a program (and chosing a document or image). However, note how often we select a folder or choose a topic from a tree.

You need to include that Windows basic design is folder driver. The user interface is served to you by the Windows EXPLORER. Every important feature you see. Your desktop, network, internet history, invisible libraries and software, favorites, my documents, pictures, videos, on and on it goes.

Windows, being an OS, deals with disks and folders. However the windows user interface works with folders, special folders, extended folders (internet history,) virtual folders. Your user account is actually a folder.

Folders, folders, folders...

The topic of this thread being window's shared folders, this HomeGroup feature and networking.

As a user, you start on the desktop and it then includes itself and a bunch of special folders like the my network, control panel, recycle bin, and MY COMPUTER. My computer then contains a list of disk drives, though to you it appears another folder. Here are the network drives where we sadly don't know their workgroup membership. HMMMM.

It is not until we choose a drive (often the C drive) that we encounter the first real rather than special folder in windows.

How networking works is common not just to Windows. There are (network) groups and users. Permission to access drives and folders is given on a folder basis, still in line with the Windows OS paradigm (approach.) Many web stragies are working with virtual folder and group permissions but with added security and a distributed desig of course.

In my view though, WorkGroups and I guess HomeGroups are collections of computers that are used for a related task. This is flexible so it might be a family, building, small business, department or staff group within that.

Your networks groups deal with people. I recommend, at any scale, along with departmental or family groups there is a complete collection of groups that define each job role amoung these people. You can also add users that are either people or serve a purpose (ie job role, adminstrator, guest.)

At work a staff change in both HR and IT now requires 10 minutes not days to set up while your new member waits around looking clever. Bob is no longer our Cook. Betty is the Cook. Group Cooks was set up once to address all cooking related issues and network drives. Thanks Bob, welcome Betty your work station wil be ready when you arrive to start work tomorrow. It really can take some IT departments days to setup a new user not to even mention appropriate computer classes.

Using Windows doesn't have to be overly complicated. It's alway great when it works though. How's the help coming along...

Computers are all about standards these days. In using Windows, try to never deviate or get to weird in your own use of folders and networking. The example I gave has a real world need but merely exploits the availabe features.

In closing, make extensive use of all kinds of shortcuts. A shortcut to a document can be copied to another folder location and is used for cross-referencing and easy navigation in the folder structure.

Through favorites we build our personal database of links to spots the web. Shortcuts are links amoung documents and items on your system. These can be moved from Favorites and copied to related spots or topics in My Compter.

This HomeGroup idea (and Home edition) is a bit confusing where Windows is concerned. I would look at it as Microsoft's attempt to simply things while at the same time creating special (separate) user interfaces to deal with networking, folder sharing and ultimately .Net and Internet plans they have.

I would expect some other views to come your way on this. Once again good look with this still early realease of WIN7, your a braver man than I. Please recall in answering your question I decided to address a more junior audience that often misses the full beneifit of our community at IT Toolbox.

As a Windows fosil... I remain baffled regarding many topics. Comments welcome.

Help protect data on your PC and portable storage devices against loss or
theft with BitLocker
<http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/bitlocker> .
Check mark
Homegroup, workgroup, Domain join, while all are a form of networking/file
and printer sharing, each has different capabilities and functions. Among
the various versions of Win7; Professional, Ultimate and *Enterprise, are
the ones that have Workgroup and Domain join capabilities.

Homegroup is the newer file share product directed at ease of use for
non-commercial venues. There is also a new server version (Home server)
which also is directed at the consumer/media share market . while anything
is possible, I would not confuse these two products with managing sharing
anything other than the consumer market they were targeted toward.

Hi
Sorry to be a pain. To go back to the original post.
I have now upgraded to Win7 Pro on both machines and I can still not
give access for c drive (or sub folder) on one machine to a user on the
other machine.
I'm inexperienced with Windows, BUT what I expected to see was my
workgroup name in locations may be and be able to select a user from the
workgroup for the drive / folder sharing permisions.
I still don't see that having both pcs in the same workgroup has changed
anything apart from in a detail view the workgroup column has the same
text in it!!
Maybe I have to switch something on at top level?
It seems I either have to give 'everyone' access or no-one (except the
administrators

Go to control panel > click system > under computer name, domain, and
workgroup - click "change settings" > under computer name tab - select
"change" > in member of - select "workgroup" - put in a name (also change or
note the computer name) .. OK your way back to desktop. The system should or
may ask you to restart.

Rinse and repeat.

Open users on each machine and insure names for access are in each.

And yes, you are being a pain - but that's OK, we all have been there at
least once or twice or much more. ;)

I assume you must have internet access? There are several tutorials/KB on
Microsoft support that could give you much more concise and precise detail
than repeated dips in these waters.

Ok I give up.
I already did all this. That's where I came in and the solution was to
switch both pcs to win7 prof. I did, but no joy. I also created (and
joined) a new(again)ly named workgroup and restarted both pcs after
upgrade to prof' when it didnt seem to work. But no change
I've been following ms support kbs and the win7 help.
I think maybe I dont really understand what workgroups are for.
Sorry to have troubled you guys. Thanks again for your patience.
BTW by open users, do you mean <Drive>:\Users or Control Panel\User
Accounts and Family Safety\User Accounts or some utility or something I
should be seeing under the network folder?

I hate to leave you hanging, but there is no reason that your workgroup
should not be working. Since we cannot see what you may not have done, we
have to assume that you have done a normal, default install.

So, at this point - fresh out of logical ideas.

The good thing about Win7 is it has several trouble shooters built in. click
start, then find the "Help and Support" search for "troubleshooter". It
should come back with a screen labeled "Open networking troubleshooters".

Read the available information and select the last one Click to open the
Shared Folders troubleshooter. It'll ask you to follow some prompts,
diagnose your system and make recommendations.

I've been watching this thread, and reading your comments and questions with
a great deal of sympathy.

I think it might be helpful to define a few terms that are used in Microsoft
networking.

Microsoft supports several different levels of network connectivity. The
lowest level used to be the "workgroup." A workgroup is simply a name that
is associated with each of the computers in the group, to enable them to
identify other computers that are being used by the same "work group" (that
is, a common set of people).

Just about the ONLY place you will ever SEE the workgroup name is in the
Network Neighborhood of Windows Explorer. When you click on "My Network
Places" in the Explorer tree view, then click on "Entire Network", then
click on "Microsoft Windows Network", the next level down is the names of
the Workgroups that are available on your Local Area Network (LAN).

The protocols that Windows has used for lo, these many years are designed so
that a computer which is part of a workgroup can view, and connect to, other
computers in the same workgroup. And that is just about all that a
"workgroup" means.

Now Windows 7 has introduced another low level of connectivity, the
"homegroup." While I haven't delved into the details of homegroups, I
suspect the main difference between a homegroup and a workgroup is the
networking protocols used to implement the identification of other members
of the group (the computers). Again, just about all that membership in a
"homegroup" means is that the computers will recognize each other, and allow
connections IF YOU HAVE THE CORRECT IDENTIFICATION AND PRIVILEGES.

Microsoft also supports a higher level of network connectivity, using a
whole collection of additional protocols and technologies that are collected
together in the Active Directory. Active Directory supports the organization
of computers into "Domains." A "domain" provides names and identification,
but it ALSO permits the use of User IDs that are associated with the DOMAIN,
not the computers; that is, the Active Directory provides identities for
"computers" and also for "users." This is a very powerful change. It means
that each user can be defined only once -- in the domain -- and the user can
then log in to any computer in the domain. In addition, access privileges to
files, folders, printers, shared folders, and so on can be defined in terms
of domain users.

In a homegroup or workgroup, user identities are defined FOR EACH COMPUTER.
There's nothing comparable to the "domain user." Therefore, when you are
trying to set up access rights, you have only two choices:
1. Set the access level for EVERYBODY (you can set it to no access, or
read only, or full access, or anything you want, but only for that Everyone
"group"), or
2. Define a user ID ON THE SHARING COMPUTER for each user.
Because the homegroup or workgroup doesn't provide group-level User IDs,
there's no way to distinguish between "users in this group" and "users from
outside this group."

Of course, when you define User IDs on each computer, if you are careful to
ensure that each computer has IDs with the same name and password, you make
it much easier to define (and use) access privileges. On each computer, you
set the access rights using the User IDs that you defined on that computer.
When a user on a different computer attempts to connect, that user is asked
to supply a User ID and password. The sharing computer will only recognize
IDs and passwords that are defined on the sharing computer, but if the user
is working with the same User ID and password, it's much easier for the user
to remember what to enter. Most versions of Windows will cache a lot of this
information, so that the user won't have to enter it every time he or she
attempts to access a shared file or folder on another computer.

In my research on Windows 7, I came across one Web page that seems to
provide an excellent summary of all the different ways a Windows 7 computer
can participate in networks, as well as an excellent set of instructions on
how to configure each computer to share files and folders, or access shared
resources on other computers. Take a look at "Networking home computers
running different versions of Windows" at
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Networking-home-computers-running-different-versions-of-Windows
Michael S. Meyers-Jouan

This thread was started by Andrew Hardy. I don't know where cdncookie came from or if he/she had the same problem. The original poster seems to still have the problem or at least has not posted since yesterday at the time of this post.

Yes still have the problem. However, I realise this has gone on a while
so please only contribute if you think the subject still merits
discussion and you are finding it interesting. It may be just me.
Setting suggested by David Nudelman are set.
Some have described (i paraphrase) that the distributed users you get
with domain networking is not provided with workgroups (i am not really
sure what workgroups are actual for - any way) and that in that case
windows does not distinguish between a username and password on one
machine and on another.
As it turns out I had already tried the idea that relates to this. ie
Create a username and password on machine B exactly the same as the one
who is logged in on machine A call him user Z say.
Then go on machine B into advanced sharing and then permissions for the
drive or folder you want to share and set permission for (possibly
amongst others) user Z.
Then from machine A, logged in as the other Z either select the
drive/folder under Network/B or map a drive and browse to the smae
place. At this point I get a message box saying (paraphrase) 'you do
not have permission to access this ... contact your system adminstrator
to give you permission' (which implies there is a way).
So... So far I can only give permission to everyone (literally, so in
that case machine A can connect, but also machine C, D, etc) or just
people

As a curiosity I set up 2 boxes (PC's) with windows Pro 7 and tried using the homegroup facility... It failed, I tried all the settings, reg mods, services and a few other bits but nothing works, I can create a homegroup, i can edit the settings etc but it will not allow me to Join a homegroup. Both PC's have firewalls disabled and no anti-virus, they are purely windows Pro 7 with no additional software installed. Something isn't quite right with homegroups and its certainly not as easy for a lot of people as its made out to be. It may be that the router has a part to play in this game of hide and seek, would be interesting to see if there are any matching criteria for people who can and cannot connect, like nic cards, routers, wireless devices and laptop brands and models.

No they are just standard PC's in a home 'Workgroup' environment, not in a domain. The point is Microsoft make it sound as easy as 1-2-3 but for a lot of people this just isn't so, so there must be something either missing, not being set correctly or a misconfiguration on a lot of PC's. There are other people who seem to have no trouble at all, why this should be so is very confusing to the public to whom Microsoft are touting the Homegroup at. The fact people are having to check services and set them to start and add or alter registry entries shows Homegroup isn't ready, nor is it functioning properly. If as some people have said the homegroup idea is to simplify networking, then its failed.

Agreed. It is not as easy to set up as it is advertised. I haven't messed with it much yet, but did see that if you have a machine that is in a domain, it will not be able to write to the homegroup. It only has read access. Then again, I couldn't get that to work either. I could see the shared folders, but couldn't access them to see what was going on inside the folders. Not quite prime-time IMHO
Etz

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